U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez struck down California’s new law requiring background checks for buying ammunition on Thursday, sharply reprimanding state legislators for violating the Second Amendment with their “onerous and convoluted” regulations. The ruling went in favor of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, which sued the state based on the legislation’s disregard for the people’s right to bear arms.
“The experiment has been tried,” Benitez wrote in a scathing opinion. “The casualties have been counted. California’s new ammunition background check law misfires and the Second Amendment rights of California citizens have been gravely injured.”
Benitez ultimately granted the plaintiff’s the preliminary injunction they sought against the state, putting the law on ice until the suit can be decided in full.
Naturally, the rabid anti-gun lobby was disheartened by the ruling.
“This is a dangerous step in the wrong direction,” lamented the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
But lawyer Chuck Michel, who argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, said that the California legislature had effectively weakened the Second Amendment’s protections for thousands of law-abiding citizens.
“The law’s red tape and state database errors made it impossible for hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Californians to purchase ammunition for sport or self-defense,” said Michel. “The court found that the flimsy reasons offered by the government to justify these constitutional infringements were inadequate. Californians can sleep a little easier tonight knowing their Constitutional rights were restored and strengthened by this decision.”
In his decision, Benitez said that regulations such as the one California is defending only hurt people already abiding by the law.
“Criminals, tyrants, and terrorists don’t do background checks,” he wrote. “The background check experiment defies common sense while unduly and severely burdening the Second Amendment rights of every responsible, gun-owning citizen desiring to lawfully buy ammunition.”
Well, yeah. That’s the basic problem with any and all of the Democratic Party’s supposed “commonsense” gun policies. If laws could stop criminals from committing crimes, that would be fantastic. But then we wouldn’t have too many murders, would we? It’s also fascinating how the party often uses episodes of mass murder to justify these laws, but many of those headline-making events are perpetrated by killers with a spotless record. But good luck making sense of gun-grabber logic; you won’t get far.
Thankfully, the Second Amendment is still alive and well in states where it is under constant assault.
Alive, anyway.
